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WASHINGTON
- November 12 - A letter was delivered to
House and Senate leaders this morning, signed by 50 American Nobel
laureates, urging Congress not to fund or build missile defense
because it will squander resources needed to protect Americans
against terrorism.
As President Bush prepares to discuss with Russian President
Putin a deal that would allow the U.S. to build missile defenses,
and just as news broke of a commercial airliner crashing into
Queens, New York, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg
released the letter at a Washington press conference sponsored by
the Federation of American Scientists. The letter argues missile
defense fails to address the real threats facing Americans.
Weinberg spearheaded the Nobel laureates' letter together with Hans
Bethe.
"The tragic events of September 11 eliminated any doubt that
America faces security needs far more substantial than a
technically improbable defense against a strategically improbable
Third World ballistic missile attack," the letter states. "Devoting
massive effort and expense to countering the least probable and
least effective threat would be unwise."
"We have real threats we have to defend against," Dr. Weinberg
said today. "We need to help the Russians get rid of their excess
material that could make nuclear weapons. We need to radically
improve our hospitals' ability to deal with biological attack, and
so forth. To starve these programs of the funds they need, while at
the same time spending huge amounts on a missile defense that wont
defend us against any plausible threat, indicates a lack of
seriousness about protecting our national security."
"As today's plane crash in New York underscores, terrorist
ballistic missiles are not the pressing threat to U.S. security,"
said Robert Sherman, director of the Strategic Security Project at
the Federation of American Scientists. "The attempt to build
missile become irrelevant in the post-Cold War environment of
terrorist threats and asymmetric warfare. We now need to put our
resources where we are most vulnerable and our enemies are most
capable."
"Previous attempts at a national missile defense have collapsed
as it became evident that performance was much lower and cost much
higher than advertised," Nobelists warn in the letter to
Congressional leaders. "We see no evidence systems currently being
put forward will meet or merit a different fate."
The Nobel laureates are also critical of the Administration's
hostility towards the ABM Treaty and other important arms control
agreements, which they say risks undermining vital
non-proliferation efforts to keep weapons of mass destruction out
of terrorist hands.
In addition to the Nobel prize, Dr. Weinberg was awarded the
National Medal of Honor by President Georger H. W. Bush. A former
consultant to the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and a member
of the elite JASONS group which advises the US government on
defense policy, Weinberg's bestselling book "The First Three
Minutes" on the origin of the universe is published in 22
languages.
The full text of the Nobelists' letter and a list of signatories
is posted to the internet at www.fas.org/nobel.pdf
To request a hardcopy of the letter or interviews with Steven
Weinberg or other signatories, call Stephen Kent, 845-424-8382
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